It's been a slow year for the smartphone industry

[froggyboy604]

It's apparently been especially sluggish this past year. According to Strategy Analytics' latest report, global shipments grew by 10 percent from Q3 2014 (323.4 million units) to Q3 2015 (354.2 million). However, 10 percent is tiny compared to previous quarters, making this the slowest growth rate within the past six years since the global recession in 2009.

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I think most people are still fine with their older smartphones, and are mainly buying replacements to replace their broken and aging smartphones.

 

[lb]

Not much came out on the smartphones market as far as innovation is concerned. Windows Phone is a mess, Blackberry is dying, so it's just the same old Androids and iPhones...

 

[froggyboy604]

Not much came out on the smartphones market as far as innovation is concerned. Windows Phone is a mess, Blackberry is dying, so it's just the same old Androids and iPhones...

I agree, there have not been much innovation in smartphones.

But, I feel many people just want an affordable cell phone for making calls, text, and using for casual gaming, basic web browsing, social networking like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, so an older phone or new $100-300+ smartphone is good enough for most tasks people use their phones for.

Many people also now own more powerful devices like tablets, laptops, desktop computers, and game consoles for when they need to do something more intensive like gaming, computer programming, photo editing, video editing, and sound editing, so they may see less of a need for a super fast smartphone when they can use bigger more powerful devices which they already own.

Another reason for fewer smartphone sales is that more people are working from home, using online banking, buying stuff online, and taking online courses at home because of high speed home internet connections, so users have less of a need for a super fast smartphone when most of their daily tasks at home can be done faster on a more powerful desktop, laptop, and tablet with a more powerful Intel Core i7 CPU with 8GB of RAM.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

not every year can be busy, and things tend to slow down.

 

[lb]

But, I feel many people just want an affordable cell phone for making calls, text, and using for casual gaming, basic web browsing, social networking like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, so an older phone or new $100-300+ smartphone is good enough for most tasks people use their phones for.

Some apps, like Kik, Whataspp and Skype tend to work rather slow on cheaper smartphones, especially Android ones. Sometimes Kik would freeze even on my Android tablet.

 

[froggyboy604]

Some apps, like Kik, Whataspp and Skype tend to work rather slow on cheaper smartphones, especially Android ones. Sometimes Kik would freeze even on my Android tablet.

I notice closing un-used background apps usually make Apps faster. I think a lot of these slowdown problems could be fixed by the app maker releasing a more lightweight version of the App, or making changes to their app to improve performance.

It kind of disappointing that messaging apps like Kik run so slowly compared to desktop messaging apps like YIM, AIM, ICQ, Skype, etc run smoothly even when I used them on an older computer with only 256MB of RAM, and a 1.7 GHz AMD Athlon XP single core CPU.